MediaMall – Digital Home’s Next Big Thing?
By Alexander Grundner |
September 11th, 2006 
One of my favorite features about Windows Media Center Edition is Online Spotlight, a portal within MCE that provides premium content from a variety of sources (some free, some will cost you, or some will require a subscription) like Napster, Movielink, TVTonic, Fox Sports, XM etc. The only problem with this model is that you’re required to have a Windows MCE PC running any time you want to access/download content through the PC itself or via a Media Extender attached to your TV. Additionally, this integrated model also ties consumers to a specific platform (in this case Microsoft Windows) which may not be ideal for all consumers.
Enter MediaMall, a “Media-On-Demand” solutions provider that has created an Online Spotlight-like software application that can be licensed and installed by OEMs on just about any embedded Linux/Windows-based set-top (I’m assuming digital media adapters as well) or PC. With MediaMall, end-users get a well laid out graphical TV interface similar to Online Spotlight to navigate services and consume all sorts of media from the Internet or from home network attached storage devices WITHOUT the need of a PC.
Current Media-On-Demand content includes movies from Movielink™ and CinemaNow™; sports clips from ESPN Motion™; news and news video clips from NewsGator™, Reuters™, NPR™, and MSNTV™; music from Napster™, Musicmatch™, Live365™, MSN Music, and XM™ Radio; and music videos from AOL Music Videos on Demand™; and photo sharing from Kodak Ofoto™. Many additional services will be launching soon, including: Akimbo™, DaveTV™, MTV Networks™ (including MTV, VH1, Country Music, Comedy Central, and other channels), Fox Sports™, itunes™, Discovery Channel™, Real Networks™ (including realRhapsody, realMovies, and Starz! Ticket).
To see MediaMall in action, jump to minute 00:12:30
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